Preparing for climate change in Washington State

Climate change is expected to bring potentially significant changes to Washington State’s natural, institutional, cultural, and economic landscape. Addressing climate change impacts will require a sustained commitment to integrating climate information into the day-to-day governance and management of infrastructure, programs, and services that may be affected by climate change. This paper discusses fundamental concepts for planning for climate change and identifies options for adapting to the climate impacts evaluated in the Washington Climate Change Impacts Assessment. Additionally, the paper highlights potential avenues for increasing flexibility in the policies and regulations used to govern human and natural systems in Washington.     

Public health impacts of climate change in Washington State: projected mortality risks due to heat events and air pollution

Illness and mortality related to heat and worsening air quality are core public health concerns associated with climate change projections. We examined the historical relationship between age- and cause-specific mortality rates from 1980 through 2006 and heat events at the 99th percentile of humidex values in the historic period from January 1, 1970 to December 31, 2006 in the greater Seattle area (King, Pierce and Snohomish counties), Spokane County, the Tri-Cities (Benton and Franklin counties) and Yakima County; the relative risks of mortality during heat events were applied to population and climate projections for Washington State to calculate number of deaths above the baseline (1980–2006) expected during projected heat events in 2025, 2045 and 2085. Three different warming scenarios were used in the analysis. Relative risks for the greater Seattle area showed a significant dose-response relationship between heat event duration and daily mortality rates for non-traumatic deaths for persons ages 45 and above, typically peaking at four days of exposure to humidex values above the 99th percentile. The largest number of projected excess deaths in all years and scenarios for the Seattle region was found for age 65 and above. Under the middle warming scenario, this age group is expected to have 96, 148 and 266 excess deaths from all non-traumatic causes in 2025, 2045 and 2085, respectively. We also examined projected excess deaths due to ground-level ozone concentrations at mid century (2045–2054) in King and Spokane counties. Current (1997–2006) ozone measurements and mid-twenty-first century ozone projections were coupled with dose-response data from the scientific literature to produce estimates overall and cardiopulmonary mortality. Daily maximum 8-h ozone concentrations are forecasted to be 16–28% higher in the mid twenty-first century compared to the recent decade of 1997–2006. By mid-century in King County the non-traumatic mortality rate related to ozone was projected to increase from baseline (0.026 per 100,000; 95% confidence interval 0.013–0.038) to 0.033 (95% CI 0.017–0.049). For the same health outcome in Spokane County, the baseline period rate of 0.058 (95% CI 0.030–0.085) was estimated increase to 0.068 (95% CI 0.035–0.100) by mid-century. The cardiopulmonary death rate per 100,000 due to ozone was estimated to increase from 0.011 (95% CI 0.005–0.017) to 0.015 (0.007–0.022) in King County, and from 0.027 (95% CI 0.013–0.042) to 0.032 (95% CI 0.015–0.049) in Spokane County. Public health interventions aimed at protecting Washington’s population from excessive heat and increased ozone concentrations will become increasingly important for preventing deaths, especially among older adults. Furthermore, heat and air quality related illnesses that do not result in death, but are serious nevertheless, may be reduced by the same measures.     

Global distribution of the intensity and frequency of hourly precipitation and their responses to ENSO

Climate Dynamics - We investigate the global distribution of hourly precipitation and its connections with the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) using both satellite precipitation...     

The impact of precipitation on speed–flow relationships along a UK motorway corridor

Although the fundamental traffic diagram provides the characteristics of a typical road traffic speed–flow relationship, little consideration has been given to the impact of adverse weather conditions on the relationship and the subsequent impact on local speed–flow. For the first time, this study uses precipitation radar along with a state-of-the art traffic information system to ascertain the relationship between speed–flow and precipitation on a UK transport corridor at the local (junction to junction) scale. It is evident that precipitation causes a significant reduction in speed and maximum flow on many links of the corridor as well as a downward reduction in the overall speed-flow relationship. With increased instances of heavy precipitation predicted in the UK as a result of climate change, these findings highlight the subsequent impact on journey travel times and associated economic costs.     

Effects of watershed land use on sources and nutritional value of particulate organic matter in temperate headwater streams

Suspended particulate organic matter (POM) in headwater streams is an important source of food and energy to stream food webs. In order to determine the effects of watershed land use on the sources and characteristics of POM, we compared the lipid composition of POM (fatty acid, aliphatic alcohol and sterol) from streams influenced by different types of watershed land use. Eight first-order streams discharging to the York River Estuary (Virginia, USA) were sampled during baseflow conditions bi-monthly from February to November 2009, including streams draining forest-dominated, pasture-dominated, cropland-dominated, and urban land-dominated watersheds. Allochthonous vs. autochthonous lipids showed that POM in most of these streams was dominated by allochthonous sources (59.5 ± 14.2 vs. 39.6 ± 14.5 % for aliphatic alcohols and 52.9 ± 11.5 vs. 34.1 ± 10.3 % for sterols). The relative abundance of allochthonous vs. autochthonous lipid inputs to POM varied as a function of land use type. POM in streams draining forest-dominated watersheds contained a higher proportion of allochthonous lipids and a lower proportion of autochthonous lipids than the streams influenced by human land use. The contribution of bacterial fatty acids differed significantly among sampling times (P = 0.003), but not among land use types (P = 0.547). Stepwise linear regression model selected nitrate and temperature as the best predictors of variation in bacterial inputs to POM. Proxies used to assess the nutritional value of POM potentially available to stream consumers included C:N ratios, and the concentrations of total long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, eicosapentaenoic acid, arachidonic acid, and cholesterol. None of these nutritional proxies differed among sampling months (P ≥ 0.171), but the proxies showed that the nutritional value of POM in forest streams was lower than in urban streams. Collectively, these findings suggest that human land use in upstream watersheds alters the source composition and nutritional value of stream POM, which not only impacts food quality for stream biota, but also potentially changes the characteristics of OM reaching downstream ecosystems.     

Investigating potential future changes in surface water flooding hazard and impact

Surface water flooding (SWF) is a recurrent hazard that affects lives and livelihoods. Climate change is projected to change the frequency of extreme rainfall events that can lead to SWF. Increasingly, data from Regional Climate Models (RCMs) are being used to investigate the potential water-related impacts of climate change; such assessments often focus on broad-scale fluvial flooding and the use of coarse resolution (>12 km) RCMs. However, high-resolution (<4 km) convection-permitting RCMs are now becoming available that allow impact assessments of more localised SWF to be made. At the same time, there has been an increasing demand for more robust and timely real-time forecast and alert information on SWF. In the UK, a real-time SWF Hazard Impact Model framework has been developed. The system uses 1-km gridded surface runoff estimates from a hydrological model to simulate the SWF hazard. These are linked to detailed inundation model outputs through an Impact Library to assess impacts on property, people, transport, and infrastructure for four severity levels. Here, a set of high-resolution (1.5 km and 12 km) RCM data has been used as input to a grid-based hydrological model over southern Britain to simulate Current (1996–2009) and Future (~2100s; RCP8.5) surface runoff. Counts of threshold-exceedance for surface runoff and precipitation (at 1-, 3- and 6-hr durations) are analysed. Results show that the percentage increases in surface runoff extremes, are less than those of precipitation extremes. The higher-resolution RCM simulates the largest percentage increases, which occur in winter, and the winter exceedance counts are greater than summer exceedance counts. For property impacts, the largest percentage increases are also in winter; however, it is the 12-km RCM output that leads to the largest percentage increase in impacts. The added-value of high-resolution climate model data for hydrological modelling is from capturing the more intense convective storms in surface runoff estimates.